FutuRIS Award 2011 for Prof. Dominique Foray

The FutuRIS platform is a discussion forum which tries to influences in a useful way the public debate by bringing pragmatic ideas and to encourage reflexion on the definition of public institutions and research and innovation strategies for firms.

The platform diffuses each year its analyses and its recommendations to the public and private decision makers in a reference book.

This year, Dominique Foray's text will be published in the FutuRIS 2011 reference book « La Recherche et l’Innovation en France » which will be issued in fall 2011 at the editions Odile Jacob.

ABSTRACT

In most regions, decision makers define R&D and innovation priorities in a rather unimaginative way. Regions imitate each other. They develop policies that spread their knowledge investments thinly across several frontier technology research fields, some in biotechnology, some in information technology, some in the several branches of nanotechnology, and, as a consequence, not making much of an impact in any one area. This lack of imagination and vision produces a uniformization of the European knowledge base and a deterioration of what can constitute the originality and distinction of local knowledge bases. This is very detrimental to the ability of most regions to be part of and contribute to the European 2020 strategy. A more promising strategy for these regions appears to construct a strategic vision of their future that asks how they should position themselves in the knowledge economy. Answering this question requires undertaking the discovery of which R&D and innovation activities can best be developed competitively in that region and then implement the policies necessary to conform to this vision. Such a discovery process is at the heart of the so-called smart specialisation strategy.